EVA #6 Report

February 6, 2008

Anna Grinberg


Time:
Departed: 16:00
Returned: 20:26


Crew Members:
Nasim Kaveh, Perry Edmundson, Anna Grinberg and John Thaler


Site Location:
1. Radio Ridge
2. Engineering Area


Transit Mode:
On foot


Objectives:
Scout a route to lay a cable for future enhanced internet connection,
calculate distance of cable needed.


Lessons Learned:
When we initially headed up Radio Ridge, we brought with us white
marker rope to highlight a route from the Hab to the repeater on Radio
Ridge. However, our guess at the quantity of rope was insufficient,
covering only the first quarter of the route. We then used rock piles
as markers. We chose to lay the route across the tops of hills rather
than the valleys to avoid increased erosion when digging, as it was
initially relayed to us that the cable should be buried. However it is
hoped that the cable doesn't have to be buried as digging will greatly
increase workload in sim and also increase the environmental impact.

Since we didn't have enough rope to complete the job, we headed to the
engineering area to untangle the pile of rope by the generator. This
was no easy task to complete in sim, and was only partially successful.
However, we did manage to extract an additional 29m of rope, which was
then tied to the repeater on Radio Ridge and thrown down the hill.
Tomorrow we will have a reliable estimate of the distance of cable
needed for the job when we untangle the rest of the rope.

While on Radio Ridge we looked for the lights of Hanksville to see if we
had line of sight, therefore allowing us to connect to Hanksville's
internet capabilities rather than using the satellite. We could see
the airport beacon, but were not able to see anything else due to
difficulties with the suit helmets and condensation.